Icarus
by lye tea
Summary: Desire is flighty. So is faith. Steven/May


**Icarus**

He sees her reclining on the mossy patch, atop a boulder that barely contained the contours of her small body. Dangling, dangerous, and taunting, her legs kicked high into the air like young shoots of bamboo bracing for spring.

"See. I can fly too."

And languid, she stretches out her arms, tilting back. She gestures, heart open (singing), above as the god of the skies soared beyond the horizon line.

Yet today, she wasn't somewhere far off and away (he reminds himself). Somewhere lost in the mountains, beneath the sea, trapeezing through wire-hung clouds. Nowhere, here. Safe, at home.

_With me_. Steven thinks, half-smiling. Knowing that everything will be all right (doesn't dare think of her father).

Laughing, she splashes water in his direction, just before diving into the shallow waters. He sinks below the dull current (match-for-match) and waits for her to surface. Slowly, she rises, a glistening fish with its scales shorn of sun. Eager and hungry, he reaches—

And stops abruptly, on the verge of touching the smooth span of her shoulder.

And asks (remembers): what he was doing with the girl.

...

His mother died when he was fourteen (the age May is now). And he supposes he's never gotten around to properly mourning her until now.

"You can't wear that," May says, quiet and firm.

"Why?"

"Because you told me she hated black."

Furtively, Steven puts back the tie and switches for another one. Cerulean. The color her eyes had been.

...

After his grandfather's retirement (usurpation), Steven inherits the edged throne, mulling over mortality and godheads. Occasionally, on languid, low-hung summer nights, May visits him in his office. During the down weeks when she isn't somewhere exotic and unknown and when he's up to his neck in numbers and investment reports.

She brings him iced tea and hot mochi with honey and adzuki paste. Prompt and fastidious like the secretary he never came around to hire.

He silently laughs over the quaintly foolish picture they made. An idyllic mosaic found in a buried house, lying on the outskirts of an ancient city. Entwined, knotted. No matter how late he works (how uncertain she is) May always arrived.

Soon, he begins to set his watch by her.

...

He catches her staring, fixated and breathless, at the moon. Curious, he wants to ask. Stymied, he just can't bring himself to form the words. Rolling at the tip, silver-scraped, the questions always seem to die off. And so, he sighs and tries to forget the sad expression on her face (the light wateriness of her wistful eyes).

...

He has his rocks and she her clouds.

He dreams of caverns and grottos and miles of unpaved earth. She envisions a sky boundless and undying, sunless yet bright—of calm islands and cool ocean waters.

"You never write," May states.

Plain, crude, and simple. She nails him perfectly to the cross.

"Sorry."

She scoffs but does not speak anymore. Mordant, the accusation cuts deeper.

_Sorry_. As if that changes anything.

...

Ironically, it is he who confesses first. In three short words and a full-thrashing typhoon, he strips apart the ultimatum. May raises a brow and scans over the list (he never approached anything without a contract inked and drying).

Having found it satisfactory, she tosses back the papers. "Just one minor thing."

"And that would be?"

Leaning in, May smiles cheerfully. She traces the length of his shoulders, fingers skimming over his collarbones. "You're gonna need this."

And casually, as if a second-thought, she hands him a Repel.

_For those long nights in the woods. You don't know just whom you'll find. _

Steven kisses her once on each cheek (sweet and quick) and watches (triumphant and amused) as her face erupt like a crimson pyre.

...

He worried he'd be the one to (inadvertently) break her heart. But she beat him to it.

Always one step ahead (and never looking back).

...

One day, he assures her, she will fly away on wings made of golden wax and glass. And there won't be a thing he can do to stop her

—but watch from ashore, safe and unscathed.

_See. See how they drown. _

"Guess this is goodbye," May says softly.

"Yes," Steven replies.

He brushes against her cheek, feels the warmth of her pale skin just one more (final) time. She closes her eyes and lets him hold her like this for a few seconds, lingering and fading into minutes, before turning away. It's better this way.

_You'll see. See how I fly?_

...

Nine months later, Steven receives a letter he's long been expecting.


End file.
